CONGRUENCE EFFECTS IN CROSS SENSORY INTERACTIONS

描述（根据摘要修改）：人类感觉神经信息 处理开始于感测模态处的输入。 一旦这些输入 是感知编码的，它们当然可以在语言上重新编码。 任何 然后，可以假设跨模态的交互过程发生在 信息流中的至少两个区域，即，在感官上 在认知层面，或在认知层面。 本提案涉及这项研究 视觉、听觉和触觉信号之间的相互作用; 特别是，本研究的兴趣在于一系列现象， 这就是所谓的一致性效应。 这些被描述为影响 当受试者被要求识别目标刺激时， 当同时呈现一种不相关的 另一种形式的刺激。 当不相关的刺激同意，或 在某些维度上匹配，或者与相关维度一致，研究 表明识别时间和准确性都比 不相关的刺激与不相关的刺激不一致的情况 目标 可以举一个简单的例子：当受试者 当被要求识别高音时，他们会更快地识别， 准确地说，当它伴随着一个视觉刺激，是高， 视觉空间，与伴随着空间低视觉时相比， 刺激。 同样的道理，低音调会更有效 当伴随着空间上低的视觉刺激比高的视觉刺激时， 一个. 首席研究员已经证明了 一致性效应在一些研究中，现在建议扩大 这一领域的研究与一系列的实验，测试是否 影响，无论是干扰或促进加工，在于 更多的是在初级感觉事件的领域， 语言再编码 他的计划是研究减少 他称之为语义层面的互动可能性， 例如，利用听觉系统的双侧不对称性 用于语言输入。 因为众所周知的左耳的优势 在处理语言的权利（在大多数科目），它应该是 可以证明具有语义的视觉事件的一致性是否 值与听觉值的比较将产生处理的改进。 在 此外，主要研究者将重复一些建议， 对一组单独的受试者进行的实验， 经验 例如，这些人不仅能感受到声音， 在视觉上也是如此，除了具有生动的色彩体验外， 听觉感知。 因为这些人表现出一种相当固定的 两种模态感知的关系，例如，特定的色调总是 当一个特定的声音模式发生时， 一致和不一致的刺激必须根据每个受试者的 个人跨模态对。 否则，一致/不一致效应将 不被发现。 由于发生的频率， 通感在一般人群中是相当低的，预期是， 只有少数科目将在三年内被发现专门用于 格兰特. 这些和类似的操纵之间的关系的感觉 维度及其语义配价为测试 相互作用过程的一小组基本定量模型。 这项工作的结果很可能证明在 开发使用一种以上方式的感官辅助工具， 通信（例如，视觉-触觉或触觉-动觉组合）， 除了提高我们对结构关系的认识， 认知事件

DESCRIPTION (modified from abstract): Human sensory-neural information processing begins with inputs at the sense modalities. Once these inputs are encoded perceptually, they may of course be recoded linguistically. Any interactive processes across modalities may then be assumed to take place in at least two regions in the information stream, viz., at the sensory level,or at the cognitive level. The present proposal deals with the study of interactions between visual, auditory, and tactual signals; in particular, the interest of the present research is in a set of phenomena that can be called congruence effects. These are characterized as effects that occur when the subject is asked to identify a target stimulus in a particular modality when there is simultaneously presented an irrelevant stimulus in another modality. When the irrelevant stimulus agrees with, or matches in some dimension, or is congruent to the relevant one, research has shown that both identification time and accuracy improve in comparison with the condition in which the irrelevant stimulus is incongruent with the target. A simple example of the phenomenon can be cited: When subjects are asked to identify a high-pitched tone, they will do so more rapidly and accurately when it is accompanied by a visual stimulus that is high in visual space, compared with when accompanied by a spatially low visual stimulus. By the same token, a low-pitched tone will be more efficiently processed when accompanied by a spatially low visual stimulus than a high one. The principal investigator has already demonstrated the existence of the congruence effect in a number of studies, and now proposes to extend this area of research with a series of experiments that test whether the effect, either as interference with or as facilitation of processing, lies more in the realm of elementary sensory events or in later events involving linguistic recoding. It is his plan to examine the effects of reducing the possibility of interactions at what he calls the semantic level by, for example, taking advantage of the bilateral asymmetry of the auditory system for linguistic input. Because of the well-known advantage of the left ear over the right (in most subjects) for processing language, it should be possible to demonstrate whether congruence of visual events having semantic value with auditory ones will produce an improvement in processing. In addition, the principal investigator will repeat some of the proposed experiments on a separate group of subjects who report synesthetic experiences. These are persons who, for example, experience sounds not only auditorily but also visually, having vivid color experiences in addition to the auditory perceptions. Because these persons exhibit a rather fixed relation of the two modal perceptions, e.g., a specific hue is always perceived when a particular sound pattern occurs, the production of congruent and incongruent stimuli must be tailored to each subject's personal cross-modal pairs. Otherwise, congruence/incongruence effects will not be detected. Owing to the fact that the frequency of occurrence of synesthesia in the general population is rather low, the expectation is that only a few subjects will be found in the three-year period devoted to the grant. These and similar manipulations of the relations between the sensory dimensions and their semantic valences provides the basis for the testing of a small set of elementary quantitative models of the interaction process. The results of this work may very well prove of significant use in the development of sensory aids that use more than one modality for communication (e.g., visual-tactual or auditory-kinesthetic combinations), in addition to advancing our knowledge of the structural relations among cognitive events.